Never Coming Home
by Shelley101
Summary: That damn seatbelt buckle. Knocking on the side of the piece of plane trapping her; cold metal grasped by a frail, bleeding hand; announcing her position to every being in those deserted woods. "I promise I'll be back." Those were the last words I ever said to Lexie Grey. That was the first and last thing I ever promised my sister. And now, she's never coming home.


**NEVER COMING HOME**

 _That damn seatbelt buckle. Knocking on the side of the piece of plane trapping her: cold metal grasped by a frail, bleeding hand and announcing her position to every being in those deserted woods._

 _"_ _Meredith," she choked. The pain was unbearable for her – I could tell from the twisted expression etched onto her face._

 _"_ _No Lexie, don't speak, okay?" I ordered. Talking was the only thing I could do now. But it was still pretty much hopeless to even do that – Lexie wasn't stupid, she knew that the extent of her injuries would mean she would only last a couple of hours without serious medical care. And even then… the chances of her surviving were – no. I shook the thought away. I wasn't going to think about it: I had to try and be the big sister and take control of what was happening. Worrying about Lexie was the least of my problems: I needed to be in charge and take responsibility for once in my life._

 _Cristina was delirious, Mark was devastated by what had happened to Lexie, Arizona's leg was completely shattered and Derek was… "Cristina," I started, turning away from my little sister to face my best friend, who was clutching her arm and looking around frantically for her shoe. She didn't make any sign to show she had heard what I'd said. "Cristina," I repeated. "We need… we need to find Derek,"_

 _My adrenaline had dissolved but I still felt no pain coming from the gaping wound in my thigh which I had carelessly wrapped with some of my clothes. The adrenaline had instead been numbed by the overwhelming fear of not knowing where my husband was; not knowing if he was even alive._

 _Cristina blinked at me; her expression still blank from the obvious shock of the crash. "Mer," she said frantically. "Where's my shoe? Have you seen my shoe?" I didn't answer. "Meredith! I can't find my shoe. I need my… I need my shoe Mer," she told me._

 _What did I care about her damn shoe? I needed to find Derek. But I couldn't leave Lexie alone, could I?_

 _No._

 _If there was one moment in my entire existence that I had to be a sister to Lexie, now was that moment._ What about Derek? _A voice in my head asked. I needed to be his wife… well, what the hell was I supposed to do? It was times like this when I wished I was still as alone as I was when I first started my internship. With no one to love me and no one for me to love._

 _But like my mother always used to say: "The carousel never stops turning,"_

 _Life keeps going, you can't just stop it and get off whenever you feel like everything is too much._

 _I heard Lexie let out a strangled cry, gargled by the blood flowing into her lungs and up into her trachea. Trachea? Was that right? Every piece of medical knowledge I had ever learnt flooded my head and flashed before my eyes. But trachea? Was that right?_

 _What did it even matter?_

 _I bent down to where my sister was: trapped under the metal, and took her tiny, weak hand in mine. It was freezing. Getting colder because of the lack of blood circulating her body… that much I knew. "I'll be back, okay? I just need to find Derek. And then I'll be back," I said. Lexie nodded: the only movement she could make without pain shooting across her entire body. "I'll be back, I promise," I repeated, trying more to reassure myself rather than my sister. "I promise I'll be back."_

 _Those were the last words I ever said to Lexie Grey. That was the first and last thing I ever promised my sister._

 _And now, she's never coming home._

...

"Mer!" Alex said loudly, snapping me out of my trance. He was clicking his fingers about two inches in front of my face. "Were you even listening to me? I've been trying to ask you about my patient for the last ten minutes,"

"Sorry, no. I was just… thinking," I replied. God, I had to stop being so distracted; I had a job. There were people who depended on me, I couldn't just keep daydreaming. I blinked at Alex, feeling slightly empty. "What did you say?" I asked him; Lexie's pained face was evaporating from my mind as quickly as it had entered.

Alex didn't reply. I noticed he no longer had the notes from the patient he was asking me about – he had obviously either asked someone else or worked it out for himself. He was still staring at me though, concern growing on his face. I had been the victim of a lot of those looks recently, people assumed that because of what had happened, I needed to be looked at constantly, to make sure I wasn't freaking out, or something. It was starting to get on my nerves actually. I hated it when people looked at me with pity in their eyes. It was okay if someone like Bailey or Richard did it but Alex? No, I didn't want that. And he had no right.

"What?" I snapped, angry at everyone and taking it out on one of my closest friends. I hated feeling like it was necessary to do this but what else was I supposed to do?

"Mer… are you alright? Do you need to sit down or something?" Alex asked me. Oh, for goodness sakes! What was the matter with everyone? What did they think I was going to do? Break down and cry in front of the entire hospital? No thanks.

"Seriously, Alex? I expected it from Bailey, but you? I'm fine. Stop treating me like I'm an unexploded bomb!" I shouted. That didn't achieve anything – now everyone within a few meters was staring at the two of us.

"Calm down…okay? Fine, don't sit. It's not like I care," Alex told me. Oh, he was so lying. But I couldn't be bothered to ask him why. The empty feeling in my chest had pretty much disappeared now and I was more embarrassed by the stares of everyone around us. And then everything got ten times worse. My intern for the day was making her way towards me. Dr Watson, or something.

She cleared her throat nervously and handed me a chart. "Dr Grey. Mr Johnson needs an IV, his white blood cell count has dropped again," she informed me.

"Well, go on then, Watson. I trust you know what you're doing?" I answered, frustrated by the stupidity of her.

"Uh… no, I… I don't," she stuttered. I stared at her. "And… it, it's Wilson,"

"I don't care," I said. "Now move before Mr Johnson dies. Do you want Mr Johnson to die?"

"No, I don't," she replied. But she didn't budge.

"Move," I repeated. But for some reason, my mind had started to wander.

...

 _"_ _I'm Lexie Grey, I'm your sister," the dark-haired intern said to me. What?_ _ **What?**_ _Sister? She couldn't be my sister… and even if she was, why did I care? It wasn't like she was anybody to me. Maybe I should tell her that… But the person on the gurney was going to die if she didn't get out of my way._

 _"_ _Move!" I yelled at her, probably ruining any chance at a relationship between us. But I didn't really want a relationship with her. This girl was claiming to be my sister, and nothing in my body or brain cared about that._

 _She obviously did care though because she stared at me, tears forming in her eyes slightly at the harshness of my voice. Maybe she had expected me to embrace and welcome her with open arms? Seriously? How pathetic. I didn't want a sister, and I definitely didn't want a sister who wore her heart on her sleeve._

 _"_ _Move," I repeated. No way could she have been my sister: she was incapable of following simple instructions. She stumbled out of the way and I pushed passed her, not even noticing that a single tear had started to fall down her cheek. A single tear that I didn't realise was for me._

 _If only I had somehow realised what she would mean to me in the years to come. If only I had known how she would leave the world; too young and too innocent. That wouldn't have made a difference though, would it? Truthfully, I don't think it would have changed how I viewed her. She was a girl. A girl who just so happened to be my sister._ _A girl called Lexie Grey._

 _A girl who was never coming home._

…

"Meredith, what the hell is wrong with you?" Alex asked me, grabbing onto my arm to stop me from collapsing. I felt strange. Light-headed and dizzy, almost. Nauseous.

"I'm fine," I muttered. But even I knew that I wasn't fine. I was anything but fine and I really needed to be alone. "Alex, can you do the IV?"

"Sure, yeah," he agreed. I knew that he thought I was fragile. And I guess, in some ways I was. But not in the way he thought.

I started walking away from him and stumbled into the first available on-call room that I could find. I closed the door behind me and then I just stopped. What was I doing? I shouldn't have been there. I should have been helping patients or been in surgery or spending time with Zola in the day care centre.

I heard someone open the door behind me but didn't turn around. I didn't have the energy to.

"Hey Mer," I heard Cristina say. I closed my eyes and let out a sigh of relief that it was only her and not someone who would ask me how I was, like Derek. "Alex said you were being all dark and twisty again," she continued. Well, I guess I was wrong about that then.

"Cristina," I sighed. I really couldn't deal with anyone, especially her, asking me who I was feeling. It was ridiculous. She was my person; she was meant to know when I didn't feel like talking.

"I have a surgery in a few minutes. John Doe got shot with a fish hook whilst skiing. Pretty awesome if you ask me. It's times like these when I love idiots who take fishing equipment to a ski resort," Cristina replied, changing the subject. "I mean – who does that? Who thinks that taking fish hooks skiing is a good idea?"

I appreciated her doing it and let out a half-hearted chuckle. "What an idiot," I agreed. "Who does that?"

Trust Cristina to be excited by another person's pain. Well, at least she got a cool surgery. I was quite annoyed actually. I hadn't had any good surgeries for a while because Bailey and Webber kept taking them as they thought I wasn't _stable_ enough to do them. Stable my ass. Okay, sure I had been in a plane crash but seriously, I could do surgery. That was probably the one thing I could do correctly.

The _only_ thing.

I couldn't even be a sister right. And even when I did take the time to try, I failed.

...

 _I was in the kitchen and had just finished making Lexie an omelette for breakfast. I had originally been annoyed that Cristina had bought home her doe-eyed intern just because she was my sister. I mean, seriously, didn't she have her own house to go? With a father? But then I decided that maybe she wasn't so bad. It wasn't her fault her father abandoned me._

 _So here I was, pathetically making breakfast for my long-lost sister who was currently sleeping who knows where. Somewhere in the house, that's for sure._

 _"_ _What is that smell?" I heard Derek say. Someone was jealous. But one look at his face when he came in told me that maybe he wasn't._

 _"_ _It's breakfast," I started. And then I saw Lexie come in. My sister. "It's breakfast for Lexie," I repeated, smiling at the brunette woman. She grimaced at me in return and sat down. Maybe she wasn't keen on eggs?_

 _But she was eating it and she seemed to be enjoying it so I decided to leave for work._

 _It was only later on, when George finally told me what he was trying to hide from me, that I found out that Lexie was allergic to eggs. Great, I had almost killed my sister._

 _What a wonderful start to our relationship._

 _But a few of years later, when we were reminiscing about when we first met, she laughed along with me when Cristina bought that event up. She had a beautiful laugh. And a warm smile to go with it. It was enough to light up any room. And that night, she had laughed until there were tears in her eyes and she could hardly breathe. The next morning, she even came up to me just to say that her ribcage hurt from all the laughter we had shared together._

 _The next time I spoke to her properly was when she was under the wreckage of a plane; struggling for breath but not because of too much laughing._

...

"Meredith?" Cristina questioned, snapping me out of my trance.

I stared at her and spoke. "Lexie is dead, Cristina. She's never coming home."


End file.
